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Speech Bubbles coming?


metwars

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Chat bubbles certainly *are* a required feature, at least for me. They allow me to focus on the actual game when I'm conversing, as opposed to continually flicking my attention to wherever the chat pane is. That's important.

 

They are a difficult thing to do well though. They weren't in WoW to start with and it took Blizzard a few iterations to get it right.

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Chat bubbles certainly *are* a required feature, at least for me. They allow me to focus on the actual game when I'm conversing, as opposed to continually flicking my attention to wherever the chat pane is. That's important.

 

They are a difficult thing to do well though. They weren't in WoW to start with and it took Blizzard a few iterations to get it right.

 

Would you still require them in this game if it meant your FPS never went above 20, and if you were on the fleet you couldn't get more than 5 FPS?

 

Because that is what will happen. This engine cannot handle chat bubbles.

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Would you still require them in this game if it meant your FPS never went above 20, and if you were on the fleet you couldn't get more than 5 FPS?

 

Because that is what will happen. This engine cannot handle chat bubbles.

 

Pretty much this, as stated before, devs had said they attempted a chat bubble system that resulting in horrible FPS.

Personally I don't like chat bubbles, I enjoy voice commutation most and use chat for whispers, guildchat, ect.

 

If they added it I also hope for an option to turn it off.

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Oh yeah I forgot Bioware are incompetent developers who cant optimize a feature that has been in mmos for over 10 years. (And they have had over a year to fix this and yet they do nothing along with a bunch of other problems with this game.) And chat bubbles are extremely useful a lot of the time people are trying to say something to me and I have no idea and then I see a few mins later and say damnit why aren't there chat bubbles almost 2 years in to friggin release.)

 

And about the LFG tool concern all the concerns can be washed away by just not allowing cross-server LFG and that's what SWTOR did which is why it worked.

 

You need a bubble to know that someone is talking to you? I'm not against bubbles but I really don't understand why someone needs these so badly as to know when they are being spoken too. Seems a lot more like people need to use their filters correctly.

 

1 chat tab with every option enabled is pure idiocy. Take 30 seconds to create tabs and you can instantly filter what you want to see.

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Pretty much this, as stated before, devs had said they attempted a chat bubble system that resulting in horrible FPS.

Personally I don't like chat bubbles, I enjoy voice commutation most and use chat for whispers, guildchat, ect.

 

If they added it I also hope for an option to turn it off.

 

I almost guarantee they'd have a toggle for it if they ever added it -- and I'm not against it's addition, if it can be done properly.

 

But yeah, even in beta the chat bubbles were horrible. Too many problems caused because of the engine -- so people will have to deal without.

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I almost guarantee they'd have a toggle for it if they ever added it -- and I'm not against it's addition, if it can be done properly.

 

But yeah, even in beta the chat bubbles were horrible. Too many problems caused because of the engine -- so people will have to deal without.

\

 

For now... But one day we will get what we want. We're not in the stone ages. "The Engine can't handle it" is not an excuse. Make it handle it.

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Would you still require them in this game if it meant your FPS never went above 20, and if you were on the fleet you couldn't get more than 5 FPS?

 

Because that is what will happen. This engine cannot handle chat bubbles.

I wouldn't accept a massive FPS reduction. I wish they were there. I won't lose any sleep without them. I can wait.

 

As for the engine's ability to handle it, of course it can. Like anything software it just takes man-hours.

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I wouldn't accept a massive FPS reduction. I wish they were there. I won't lose any sleep without them. I can wait.

 

As for the engine's ability to handle it, of course it can. Like anything software it just takes man-hours.

 

That is not true at all, and you must not know software well.

 

The engine CAN'T handle it. Not without massive alterations that may or may not be possible without rewriting the entire game, or porting it to a new engine.

 

Both are basically out of the question, as it would require EA to put a significant amount of money into the game.

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\

 

For now... But one day we will get what we want. We're not in the stone ages. "The Engine can't handle it" is not an excuse. Make it handle it.

 

Yeah, no, that isn't how it works.

 

EA won't rewrite the engine. It is more than possible this engine will NEVER be able to handle it, without a full rewrite, which won't happen.

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That is not true at all, and you must not know software well.

 

The engine CAN'T handle it. Not without massive alterations that may or may not be possible without rewriting the entire game, or porting it to a new engine.

 

Both are basically out of the question, as it would require EA to put a significant amount of money into the game.

 

/Agree with this assessment.

 

And I would add that there simply is no reasonable business case for the investment in time and money that would be required.

 

Would it be nice to have chat bubbles for the bubble inclined? Sure. Is it in any way worth turning the game engine on it's head to implement? Not a chance.

 

Besides.. any investments into performance improvements in the game engine should be directed to better performance in high crowd and high activity events.

 

People can huff and puff all they want about how engine performance is not an acceptable reason for not having chat bubbles.. but all that huffing and puffing means exactly squat. It is what it is..... cope with it IMO.

Edited by Andryah
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Well, actually as someone with a degree in 3D programming, that would be me, it isn't technically requiring a full rewrite of the code-base. It would need optimization of some of the rendering pipes for that section of code dealing with how the bubble is rendered containing the input text.

 

Now, that being said, is it economically feasible for the man hours to do? Probably not, not when there are bigger issues to deal with and you've got a limited budget and team. The ROI just wouldn't support it at this time.

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Well, It might be possible with group use. With a toggle of course.

 

If it is something that a group is allowed to use and only group members see the bubbles from folks inside the group it might be one way to avoid the lag issue, and add some utility.

 

Chat bubbles could be very useful inside a group IMO.

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That is not true at all, and you must not know software well.

I won't tell you my software credentials because you simply won't believe me.

 

The engine CAN'T handle it. Not without massive alterations that may or may not be possible without rewriting the entire game, or porting it to a new engine.

You need to stop spouting this stuff. We're talking about a well-understood feature with a definable impact on the game's performance. Of course it's possible, it just takes the will, the prioritisation, and the time. There's a limited supply of these things, which means it might not ever happen, but it's got nothing to do with the code.

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Well, It might be possible with group use. With a toggle of course.

You really only need to look as far as WoW. Their realization of bubbles is about perfect...BUT, it took them a while to get there.

 

It's fully toggle-able, and even when it's on, you only see bubbles from people in your immediate vicinity, and only from certain channels (/say and /party IIRC). The biggest problems are depth-ordering, what happens when they intersect, and how you handle bubbles that abutt the edge of the screen. Those are non-trivial issues and not everyone will agree with how they should be solved.

 

I'm wondering if those averse to the feature are imagining speech bubbles to infinity, with every NPC emote pasted up on the screen life graffiti? That's really not the way it will work.

 

Anyway, enough said on the subject. :)

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Yeah, no, that isn't how it works.

 

EA won't rewrite the engine. It is more than possible this engine will NEVER be able to handle it, without a full rewrite, which won't happen.

 

They already have re-written the engine to handle more characters on screen server side a few weeks ago and recently slotted in lighting and graphical tools within the engine , so nope it can be done.

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

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Well, It might be possible with group use. With a toggle of course.

 

If it is something that a group is allowed to use and only group members see the bubbles from folks inside the group it might be one way to avoid the lag issue, and add some utility.

 

Chat bubbles could be very useful inside a group IMO.

 

How would it be usefull in group settings?

 

"Over here"?

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I hate the thought of chat balloons. Besides sw I also play on Second Life and had chat balloons on once in a club and there were so many that you couldn't see what everyone was saying. They are a horrible idea and I don't use them and would never use them if they added them on here. It would make things to cartoony for me.

 

I realize that there would be fewer ones here as people are more spread out here, but I despise them. I detest them. I loathe them with every waking breath, and sleeping ones too!

 

In short, I have played a game with them and don't like them one bit.

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How would it be usefull in group settings?

 

"Over here"?

 

They bring focus to individuals with direct indication of who is talking and where. It is a game play aid, and can be used for RP purposes, though not as useful as a full chat bubble option.

 

It provides the benefits of visual focused communication without the likely server lag...at least in concept.

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They already have re-written the engine to handle more characters on screen server side a few weeks ago and recently slotted in lighting and graphical tools within the engine , so nope it can be done.

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

 

Ill believe it when I see it.

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If they are added, I'd really like an option to turn them off. I played rift and other games with them and just didn't appeal to me personally. But for those who rp, I can relate to them having things at their disposal to create their immersion. So, /signed if they can be optioned off.
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I have yet to see a game that is in 2 years with release and have no Chat Bubbles. So bad. Anyways GW2 didn't have Chat bubbles in Beta and people asked for it and Anet added them. People have been asking for over a year and Bioware is like "Whats a chat bubble." It makes no sense.

 

what doesn't make sense is people that can't seem to listen to what BioWare has said. Chat bubbles, thanks to slapping a $5 game engine on an $80million+ game, cause too much lag. That's WHY they were REMOVED.

 

are we still using the same game engine?

are we still seeing lag issues and poor performance for a lot of people?

 

the answer to both those are YES..even if the second doesn't apply to you.

 

sooo..what's not to understand?

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